Mother nature tried, but failed to stop me this weekend.

Things are progressing on the house front.  The contract is signed, I just need to digitize it and send everything to the bank, and I should be good on the paperwork.  I also chose my colors.  The outside is a darker beige than I wanted, but there weren't a ton of options.  Vinyl siding is easy to change down the road if I don't like it, though it would have to be really bad for me to consider changing it.  The interior is a lighter carpet, slightly darker linoleum wood print, and a hickory finish for the cabinets.  The countertops have a light granite-like formica finish on them.  

Friday was pretty nice, and I took off early from work since I have been working long days the last couple of weeks.  I took advantage of the nice weather to clear off the cap, and get the windows and stuff pulled out so they could dry and melt off.

Saturday started off aggravating.  The forecast said a 10% chance of snow showers Friday night, no accumulation.  I woke up to about 3" and still coming down.  While I am mildly curious why nothing accumulated on the slab (historically it doesn't melt any better than the rest of the driveway) the whole thing was still mildly annoying.  

So I went out and ran my errands and stuff on Saturday.  It mostly all melted Saturday, and finished melting off Sunday morning.  Sunday morning I started off by eating my birthday "cake".  Ok, not really a cake, but was still good.

While I waited for the frost and stuff to melt off, I prepped the snowblower.  Refilled the oil, filled up the gas, and checked the air in the tractor tire that occasionally goes flat.  We are supposed to get another major storm tonight and tomorrow.  Because we really needed another 18-24" of snow.  Sigh.  Sometimes I think mother nature is really trying to convince me to move south.  

Despite the surprise snow on Saturday, I did get some work on the cap done.  It felt nice to work on it again.  The main task Sunday was installing windows.  It turns out that the foam blocks I got from Dad for spacing the batteries in the power center were perfect for holding the window and raising it a little.  

I got both of the windows installed on the house side.

I went to install the latches, and realized that I don't have a large enough drill bit.  Oops.  For now I just taped them shut.  

I got all the gasketing for the front installed, and went to install the acrylic, and realized that I mis-measured something.  It looks to be one board length too wide, though I am not sure how that happened; I built the frame and then measured that to cut the acrylic.  Another oops.  At least this one is easily correctable.

After that it was time to go get my free birthday pizza.  Luhao made me some cookies too which are really good.

Winter projects:

• Knock down the dead knotweed. 
• Winterize equipment.  Fire up the generator

• Get the building permit.
• Complete detailed house plans.
• Get contractors in place.  
• Get the plan/schedule in place. 
  
• Design future method of travel.  Consider building the prototype.
  
• Shed floor.
• Shed windows.
• Fix generator box.  Decide/do something about power center.
  
• Clear/mark walking trails.